


First Steps

by hellostarlight20



Series: Prompts [23]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Internal Thoughts, Post Bad Wolf Bay, Romance, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 18:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6162739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous asked: I wish you'd write a fic from the POV of Tentoo's internal monologue as they walk away from Bad Wolf Bay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Steps

In the echoing silence of the TARDIS’s dematerialization, Rose looked to him, face set but not expressionless. Confusion and understanding and loss and love and hope and grief.

Words crowded his throat—all he wanted to say to her. Everything he wanted to say since he saw her on the deserted street running toward him. Loss and loneliness and desolation.

The Doctor wanted to tell her every single thing he thought and did during their separation. The hope he lost when he lost her. The friends he found who never took her place and he always hoped she’d one day meet.

What have you done?  
Who did you meet?  
Are you happy?  
Were you happy?  
Did you have a fantastic life? I hope you had a fantastic life.  
I hope you were happy, Rose Tyler. Even if you missed me as much as I missed you—a quarter of how much I missed you.

“We should go.” Jackie’s voice cut through their silence.

The bubble of words hovered. Waited. Surrounded them even with Jackie’s insistence, impatience.

“Yeah.” Rose’s lips move but the word barely dented their bubble.

“I…”

Love you. I meant that.  
Missed you. With every breath.  
Want you. More than yesterday.  
Need you in my life no matter how.  
Will never leave you.  
Don’t leave me.

“Yeah,” Rose said, softer now, the word between them, in their small cocoon. Their cocoon of silence and hope and things unsaid and things said but not (yet) returned and words and feelings and life.

Squeezing her hand, the Doctor tugged her along the beach. Her fingers, stiff with cold and shock and loss—she didn’t need to tell him that, he was him after all, no matter how many hearts he did or did not have—tight around his.

Despite the wind and the freezing cold and Jackie looking over her shoulder every half-step, the Doctor felt Rose lean her head on his shoulder and sighed in contentment.

This was it. This was his street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home. He never had a life like that. But wanted one. Oh, maybe not with curtains and carpeting and walls that closed in around him.

But that…connection. With Rose.

Want to run away with me? Again?  
You and me and the world. So much to see.  
So many places to snog.  
Oh, and make love!

The Doctor looked happily down at her with this last thought. Rose, as if sensing his shift in mood, looked up. Dual lines bracketed her mouth, set a groove between her eyebrows. He lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb between her brows, smoothing the lines out.

“What?” Rose asked in that same quiet voice, well within their personal bubble.

“We have our entire lives laid out in front of us now,” he said, voice low.

Rose slowly nodded. “I suppose we do.”

“This isn’t what you envisioned.” He nodded. “I get it, I do. Wrong universe, wrong TARDIS.”

He held up the fragment of TARDIS coral the other Doctor and Donna gave them—oh, Donna. He cleared his throat and fervently hoped his dear friend had a fantastic life. She didn’t need to travel with him to be amazing. He hoped, after, she somehow still remembered that.

“Still the same Doctor,” Rose said.

Tentatively. Hopefully. Eyes searching his for any hidden meaning.

Oh, Rose, you’ve always known me better than anyone. Don’t you know?

The Doctor squeezed her hand and managed, “Same Doctor.” Then, uncertain but willing to take the chance because what was this life with Rose he now had laid out before him if not for taking chances? “Your Doctor.”

And just like that every ounce of tension left Rose’s body with her next breath. Bled out of their bubble and dissipated into the cold Norwegian air, far from them.

“Will—” he stopped and swallowed, the enormity of this next step yawning before them. “Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“Are you asking me to take the first step?” Rose asked. Tentative and hopeful and confused and, yes—hurt.

“No.” The Doctor stopped and turned, drawing her into his arms as if no time passed between them. “I’m asking you to take our first step with me. Together.”

Travel and loving and running and laughter and kissing and so many adventures he’d yet to have and wanted each and every first to be with her.

Her smile stared slow, small, and blossomed over her face until it radiated from her as if the brightest star, a super nova, galaxies being born, a ray of sunshine. The Heart of the TARDIS. His every dream and wish and hope and fantasy.

Turning to face the way they’d been walking, Rose shuffled back from him and held out her hand for his once more.

“Let’s get started then, Doctor. We have a lot of steps to cover.”


End file.
